Miami 2022: Diary – Day 1

Since we had an evening flight, we were able to sleep late in our own beds. The boys were excited about being on school vacation and about the prospect of going back to Miami.

Weekend Activities

As with most weekends, and Saturdays in particular, the day was filled with kid’s activities. In the morning Tomatico had his baseball clinic and in the early afternoon his brother had a Tai Chi class. We split in the morning and I took our youngest with me to take care of the trash and get an early lunch. We were greeted with an unexpectedly mild February day. We got a pizza for lunch and ate it outside in a park. It was sunny and 60 degrees out and we were definitely going to take advantage of that even if we were looking forward to even warmer weather in Miami.

Back at home, I had some work I needed to get done before we left. Tomatico finished his last minute packing and we were ready to go by the time our youngest got back from his class.

To The Airport!

This was our first time traveling on a plane in nearly a year and it was the first time since we had moved. It was also an airport that we had not been to before so we didn’t know what to expect. We left a fair amount of time to get there, but we also didn’t have anything else to do.

I summoned a Lyft about 2.5 hours before our flight was to leave and it was only 20 minutes to get to Westchester County Airport. When we arrived at the airport, the place was deserted and we were the only travelers there 2 hours before the flight.

We checked our bags at the counter, where there was no line, and had an hour and 55 minutes to spare. We took a tour of everything the airport had to offer and even went up to the observation deck, though there weren’t any flight arriving or departing to observe. It’s a really small airport so next time we’ll know we can leave closer to the departure time.

We made our way through security using PreCheck, even though there wasn’t anyone else. This at least let us keep our laptops in our bags and shoes on our feet. Once through we found there were 6 gates in the single terminal and about a dozen travelers waiting for their flights. We made our way to the one and only store and got some snacks to help pass the time as best we could.

This airport gets a lot of business from private jets and we could see several land while we were waiting. They of course went to separate terminals.

I checked an app online and saw our flight was still on time and the plane we would fly on looked to be arriving on time as well, though I did get a notification from JetBlue that there was a gate change. We just moved one door down and even checked in at the same podium. The benefits of a small airport!

Welcome to Miami! (well, Ft. Lauderdale)

Our flight was on time and uneventful. The movies on my wife’s screen weren’t working, so she ended up just listening to music and getting a ton of work done using the free wifi. This isn’t the first time she’s been super productive on a plane. Maybe we should plan more trips?

I had trouble watching movies as well so I ended up watching some TV, catching up on some of the Winter Olympic coverage.

Our luggage arrived as expected and we made our way to the Shared Ride pickup area to call the Lyft. We were wondering if we’d get the same drive we had the three previous times we had taken rides from the airport! No luck. We got a different driver who took us the 45 minutes to our hotel in South Beach

Welcome to Miami (Beach)

When we arrived at the address for the hotel, it honestly looked like a bar. We weren’t 100% sure it was the right entrance, but it said Moxy on the sign and we could see the hotel up above so we knew we were close. It was 10:30 on a Saturday night and things were starting to get lively.

Inside we were directed to the checkin counter. Earlier in the day I had checked to see if we had gotten our suite upgrade, but found it had been denied. When we checked in, the agent said that the room we were supposed to get had an issue with the previous guest so they were going to give us a different room, which ended up being one of the upgraded rooms I had requested and been denied!

Instead of having 2 queen beds, the room had two bunkbeds. The boys LOVED that idea! While the room itself isn’t any bigger than the room with two queen beds, the space was more efficient. It even had room for a desk and a bench for our suitcases. The queen room didn’t even have a place to put our luggage on the floor based on the reviews we had seen online. We were definitely happy about this upgrade!

While Moxy hotels do not give breakfast as an elite status welcome gift (booo!), they do offer a $10 per adult per day food and beverage credit which we took instead of the points. There are several restaurants we could use that daily $20 on. As a final part of the checkin they gave us two tokens for welcome drinks so we could join in the festivities.

The hotel definitely had a vibe to it. It’s a millennial crowd and not particularly family-centric, but not hostile to families as some hotels we’ve been to. There’s music everywhere and people are just getting started at 11pm instead of starting to turn in like we were. I was worried the music would keep the boys (and me) awake all night, but I noticed a sign in the room said they have white noise machines available at the front desk.

The one we got was USB-powered and had a cable, but no charger to plug it in. Luckily I had a charger we could use. The machine definitely helped drown out the music until it shut down sometime after midnight.

This was a good start to our vacation and we looked forward to exploring more of the hotel and the surrounding area in the morning.